On the Clifford algebra of a binary form

The Clifford algebra of a binary form of degree is the -algebra , where is the ideal generated by . has a natural homomorphic image that is a rank Azumaya algebra over its center. We prove that the center is isomorphic to the coordinate ring of the complement of an explicit -divisor in , where is the curve and is the genus of .

     

Poset block equivalence of integral matrices

Given square matrices and with a poset-indexed block structure (for which an block is zero unless ), when are there invertible matrices and with this required-zero-block structure such that ? We give complete invariants for the existence of such an equivalence for matrices over a principal ideal domain . As one application, when is a field we classify such matrices up to similarity by matrices respecting the block structure. We also give complete invariants for equivalence under the additional requirement that the diagonal blocks of and have determinant . The invariants involve an associated diagram (the ``-web') of -module homomorphisms. The study is motivated by applications to symbolic dynamics and -algebras.

     

A classification and examples of rank one chain domains

A chain order of a skew field is a subring of so that implies Such a ring has rank one if , the Jacobson radical of is its only nonzero completely prime ideal. We show that a rank one chain order of is either invariant, in which case corresponds to a real-valued valuation of or is nearly simple, in which case and are the only ideals of or is exceptional in which case contains a prime ideal that is not completely prime. We use the group of divisorial of with the subgroup of principal to characterize these cases. The exceptional case subdivides further into infinitely many cases depending on the index of in Using the covering group of and the result that the group ring is embeddable into a skew field for a skew field, examples of rank one chain orders are constructed for each possible exceptional case.

     

The periodic Euler-Bernoulli equation

We continue the study of the Floquet (spectral) theory of the beam equation, namely the fourth-order eigenvalue problem

where the functions and are periodic and strictly positive. This equation models the transverse vibrations of a thin straight (periodic) beam whose physical characteristics are described by and . Here we develop a theory analogous to the theory of the Hill operator .

We first review some facts and notions from our previous works, including the concept of the pseudospectrum, or -spectrum.

Our new analysis begins with a detailed study of the zeros of the function , for any given ``quasimomentum' , where is the Floquet-Bloch variety of the beam equation (the Hill quantity corresponding to is , where is the discriminant and the period of ). We show that the multiplicity of any zero of can be one or two and (for some ) if and only if is also a zero of another entire function , independent of . Furthermore, we show that has exactly one zero in each gap of the spectrum and two zeros (counting multiplicities) in each -gap. If is a double zero of , it may happen that there is only one Floquet solution with quasimomentum ; thus, there are exceptional cases where the algebraic and geometric multiplicities do not agree.

Next we show that if is an open -gap of the pseudospectrum (i.e., ), then the Floquet matrix has a specific Jordan anomaly at and .

We then introduce a multipoint (Dirichlet-type) eigenvalue problem which is the analogue of the Dirichlet problem for the Hill equation. We denote by the eigenvalues of this multipoint problem and show that is also characterized as the set of values of for which there is a proper Floquet solution such that .

We also show (Theorem 7) that each gap of the -spectrum contains exactly one and each -gap of the pseudospectrum contains exactly two 's, counting multiplicities. Here when we say ``gap' or ``-gap' we also include the endpoints (so that when two consecutive bands or -bands touch, the in-between collapsed gap, or -gap, is a point). We believe that can be used to formulate the associated inverse spectral problem.

As an application of Theorem 7, we show that if is a collapsed (``closed') -gap, then the Floquet matrix is diagonalizable.

Some of the above results were conjectured in our previous works. However, our conjecture that if all the -gaps are closed, then the beam operator is the square of a second-order (Hill-type) operator, is still open.

     

Connections with prescribed first Pontrjagin form

Let be a principal bundle over a manifold of dimension . If , then we prove that every differential 4-form representing the first Pontrjagin class of is the Pontrjagin form of some connection on .     

The free entropy dimension of hyperfinite von Neumann algebras

Suppose is a hyperfinite von Neumann algebra with a normal, tracial state and is a set of selfadjoint generators for . We calculate , the modified free entropy dimension of . Moreover, we show that depends only on and . Consequently, is independent of the choice of generators for . In the course of the argument we show that if is a set of selfadjoint generators for a von Neumann algebra with a normal, tracial state and has finite-dimensional approximants, then for any hyperfinite von Neumann subalgebra of Combined with a result by Voiculescu, this implies that if has a regular diffuse hyperfinite von Neumann subalgebra, then .

     

Stratified transversality by isotopy

For an abstract stratified set or a -regular stratification, hence for any -, - or -regular stratification, we prove that after stratified isotopy of , a stratified subspace of , or a stratified map , can be made transverse to a fixed stratified map .

     

Explicit Lower bounds for residues at of Dedekind zeta functions and relative class numbers of CM-fields

Let be a given set of positive rational primes. Assume that the value of the Dedekind zeta function of a number field is less than or equal to zero at some real point in the range . We give explicit lower bounds on the residue at of this Dedekind zeta function which depend on , the absolute value of the discriminant of and the behavior in of the rational primes . Now, let be a real abelian number field and let be any real zero of the zeta function of . We give an upper bound on the residue at of which depends on , and the behavior in of the rational primes . By combining these two results, we obtain lower bounds for the relative class numbers of some normal CM-fields which depend on the behavior in of the rational primes . We will then show that these new lower bounds for relative class numbers are of paramount importance for solving, for example, the exponent-two class group problem for the non-normal quartic CM-fields. Finally, we will prove Brauer-Siegel-like results about the asymptotic behavior of relative class numbers of CM-fields.

     

West's problem on equivariant hyperspaces and Banach-Mazur compacta

Let be a compact Lie group, a metric -space, and the hyperspace of all nonempty compact subsets of endowed with the Hausdorff metric topology and with the induced action of . We prove that the following three assertions are equivalent: (a) is locally continuum-connected (resp., connected and locally continuum-connected); (b) is a -ANR (resp., a -AR); (c) is an ANR (resp., an AR). This is applied to show that is an ANR (resp., an AR) for each compact (resp., connected) Lie group . If is a finite group, then is a Hilbert cube whenever is a nondegenerate Peano continuum. Let be the hyperspace of all centrally symmetric, compact, convex bodies , , for which the ordinary Euclidean unit ball is the ellipsoid of minimal volume containing , and let be the complement of the unique -fixed point in . We prove that: (1) for each closed subgroup , is a Hilbert cube manifold; (2) for each closed subgroup acting non-transitively on , the -orbit space and the -fixed point set are Hilbert cubes. As an application we establish new topological models for tha Banach-Mazur compacta and prove that and have the same -homotopy type.

     

Zero entropy, non-integrable geodesic flows and a non-commutative rotation vector

Let be a -step nilpotent Lie algebra; we say is non-integrable if, for a generic pair of points , the isotropy algebras do not commute: . Theorem: If is a simply-connected -step nilpotent Lie group, is non-integrable, is a cocompact subgroup, and is a left-invariant Riemannian metric, then the geodesic flow of on is neither Liouville nor non-commutatively integrable with first integrals. The proof uses a generalization of the rotation vector pioneered by Benardete and Mitchell.

     

Contractive projections and operator spaces

Parallel to the study of finite-dimensional Banach spaces, there is a growing interest in the corresponding local theory of operator spaces. We define a family of Hilbertian operator spaces , , generalizing the row and column Hilbert spaces and , and we show that an atomic subspace that is the range of a contractive projection on is isometrically completely contractive to an -sum of the and Cartan factors of types 1 to 4. In particular, for finite-dimensional , this answers a question posed by Oikhberg and Rosenthal. Explicit in the proof is a classification up to complete isometry of atomic w-closed -triples without an infinite-dimensional rank 1 w-closed ideal.

     

Spines and topology of thin Riemannian manifolds

Consider Riemannian manifolds for which the sectional curvature of and second fundamental form of the boundary are bounded above by one in absolute value. Previously we proved that if has sufficiently small inradius (i.e. all points are sufficiently close to the boundary), then the cut locus of exhibits canonical branching behavior of arbitrarily low branching number. In particular, if is thin in the sense that its inradius is less than a certain universal constant (known to lie between and ), then collapses to a triply branched simple polyhedral spine.

We use a graphical representation of the stratification structure of such a collapse, and relate numerical invariants of the graph to topological invariants of when is simply connected. In particular, the number of connected strata of the cut locus is a topological invariant. When is -dimensional and compact, has complexity in the sense of Matveev, and is a connected sum of copies of the real projective space , copies chosen from the lens spaces , and handles chosen from or , with 3-balls removed, where . Moreover, we construct a thin metric for every graph, and hence for every homeomorphism type on the list.

     

The structure of equicontinuous maps

Let be a metric space, and be a continuous map. In this paper we prove that if is compact, and for all , then is equicontinuous if and only if there exist a pointwise recurrent isometric homeomorphism and a non-expanding map that is pointwise convergent to a fixed point such that is uniformly conjugate to a subsystem of the product map . In addition, we give some still simpler necessary and sufficient conditions of equicontinuous graph maps.

     

Stationary sets for the wave equation in crystallographic domains

Let be a crystallographic group in generated by reflections and let be the fundamental domain of We characterize stationary sets for the wave equation in when the initial data is supported in the interior of The stationary sets are the sets of time-invariant zeros of nontrivial solutions that are identically zero at .

We show that, for these initial data, the -dimensional part of the stationary sets consists of hyperplanes that are mirrors of a crystallographic group , This part comes from a corresponding odd symmetry of the initial data.

In physical language, the result is that if the initial source is localized strictly inside of the crystalline , then unmovable interference hypersurfaces can only be faces of a crystalline substructure of the original one.

     

On the inversion of the convolution and Laplace transform

We present a new inversion formula for the classical, finite, and asymptotic Laplace transform of continuous or generalized functions . The inversion is given as a limit of a sequence of finite linear combinations of exponential functions whose construction requires only the values of evaluated on a Müntz set of real numbers. The inversion sequence converges in the strongest possible sense. The limit is uniform if is continuous, it is in if , and converges in an appropriate norm or Fréchet topology for generalized functions . As a corollary we obtain a new constructive inversion procedure for the convolution transform ; i.e., for given and we construct a sequence of continuous functions such that .

     

Weierstrass functions with random phases

Consider the function

where 1$">, , and is a non-constant 1-periodic Lipschitz function. The phases are chosen independently with respect to the uniform probability measure on . We prove that with probability one, we can choose a sequence of scales such that for every interval of length , the oscillation of satisfies . Moreover, the inequality is almost surely true at every scale. When is a transcendental number, these results can be improved: the minoration is true for every choice of the phases and at every scale.

     

A geometric characterization of Vassiliev invariants

It is a well-known paradigm to consider Vassiliev invariants as polynomials on the set of knots. We prove the following characterization: a rational knot invariant is a Vassiliev invariant of degree if and only if it is a polynomial of degree on every geometric sequence of knots. Here a sequence with is called geometric if the knots coincide outside a ball , inside of which they satisfy for all and some pure braid . As an application we show that the torsion in the braid group over the sphere induces torsion at the level of Vassiliev invariants: there exist knots in that can be distinguished by -invariants of finite type but not by rational invariants of finite type. In order to obtain such torsion invariants we construct over a universal Vassiliev invariant of degree for knots in .

     

Inverse functions of polynomials and orthogonal polynomials as operator monotone functions

We study the operator monotonicity of the inverse of every polynomial with a positive leading coefficient. Let be a sequence of orthonormal polynomials and the restriction of to , where is the maximum zero of . Then and the composite are operator monotone on . Furthermore, for every polynomial with a positive leading coefficient there is a real number so that the inverse function of defined on is semi-operator monotone, that is, for matrices , implies